According to the academic bore Phil Hardy in his Encyclopedia of Horror
this snoozefest contains scenes of enormous power ? WTF ! I must have
missed them then because i certainly saw NO scenes of any power in this
failed attempt of making a farsical horror, but maybe .... just maybe,
Roman
Polanski saw this clunker and decide to make a much better farsical
horror some year later with his classic The Fearless Vampire Killers
?
The ending scene of She Beast with "I'll be Back" somewhat
resembles the ending scene of the Polanski film with the vampire virus
being spread to the
rest of the world, and here with the evil re-animated witch saved from
the lake and going outside of Transylvania to do her evil deeds.
To make things worse, the only reason to watch this film - Barbara Steele,
disappears from the film almost immediately (with the car crash) just
to return
at the end of it. That was disappointing and the Encyclopedia says that
this very lowgrade production only had access to Steele for 4 days of
shooting.
And NO, the drowning scene of the hysterically shrieking witch Vardella
played by a huge and obviously male stuntman was more annoying than
powerful to me. Boy, was that an ugly witch and played strictly for
comedy it may work, for some.
But ONE thing this film for sure has .... is a lot of
alternative titles -
The She Beast / La Sorella di Satana / Il Lago di Satana / Satan's Sister
/ The Revenge of the Blood Beast / El Lago de Satán /Carnaval
de Sangre, and
El Enterrador y sus colegas
I'll be Back!
Yes, an odd lowbudget horror-comedy that's neither scary
nor funny. But, Barbara Steele is in it for some minutes, i'll give
it that.
In the "real" direction debut for legendary and sadly died
too young director Michael "Witchfinder General" Reeves a
british couple is travelling in
Transylvania, Veronica (Barbara Steele) och Phillip (Ian Ogilvy) without
knowing what lurks in the nearby lake.
Filmed in Italy this is supposed to take place in today Transylvania,
Roumania.
An old fart, some count (John Carlsen) has found
out that an evil witch, Varella, has been killed by the villagers 200
years earlier, drowned in a lake.
The young couple have an accident with their car, crashes into that
lake and Veronica dies, maybe. Phillip roams around the village of Vaubrac
with
Van Helsing, the old man, and there's the supposedly funny hotel owner,
Groper (Mel Welles) and somewhere Lucretia Love can be seen too (and
she can be seen i.a. as one of the victims in the pretty cool giallo
"The Killer Reserved Nine Seats" some 8-9 years later.
The 2009 US Dark Sky Films DVD edition was presented
in anamorphic widescreen with an english mono audio, a picture gallery
and a nice audio
commentary by producer Paul M. Maslansky, Ian Ogilvy and the legendary
Barbara Steele herself, telling us about her amazing career in Italian
film.
The 2016 Spanish Vial of Delicatessen DVD is presented
in anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 and with an english audio 2.0, theatrical
trailer. Region 2